this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
404 points (99.0% liked)

News

23376 readers
1850 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Third Avenue Bridge, which connects New York's the Bronx to Manhattan, got stuck in an open position due to the high heat on Monday.

FDNY officers arrived in boats and fired water at the structure to try and cool down the metal, which expanded after high temperatures in the city, officials say.

The incident caused major traffic delays during one of the hottest days of the year in New York but reopened on the same day.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 months ago (2 children)

We had a similar issue with an older bridge here in Gothenburg, Sweden. The fix was to install water sprinklers during the summer to keep the bridge from expanding too much.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What if we cooled it with the blood of climate change deniers?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Dumb question, but why is the water cooler than the bridge? Because it was underground? Or does the evaporation help because it's endothermic?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's a good question. Steel is very good at absorbing and retaining heat. Water on the other hand isn't. Metals in general have way better thermal conductivity than water.

Exposed to the sun at the same time, a piece of metal will warm up a few times faster than the water. I believe steels can be somewhere around 8-10 times less energy required than to heat a similar mass of water.

The water could even start out slightly warmer than the bridge. Evaporative cooling would also work here since there is plenty of ventilation around the bridge. But that can slow down based upon humidity level.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Because metals have way better thermal conductivity, they aren't good at retaining heat.

Heating equal masses of steel and water the same amount takes exactly the same energy, it just might take longer for the insulator vs. the conductor.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Specific heat of liquid water is around 4. Steel is like .45-.50 or around there. So it would take 450-500 joules to increase 1kg of steel 1C. Would take around 4k joules to increase 1kg of water by 1C.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Isn't your wording on the previous post a bit wrong? Metal isn't good at retaining heat, quite the opposite but it is a lot easier to heat it up in terms on temperature causing the issue in question. The issue isn't that it is retaining heat but the temperature raising quicker as environment gets hotter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I should have added "compared to the air around it" because that's what I was thinking in my head.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I entirely forgot about specific heat. I am an idiot.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Both. Even the river water below the surface will be cooler than steel that's been sitting in the sun. And putting that cool water on the bridge absorbs some of the heat and is removed in evaporation, just like sweating.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Water also needs a substantial amount of energy to evaporate, hence it will sip some heat from the environment around it when it evaporates. Combined with the good thermal conductivity of steel, the bridge cools off.

You get a similar effect when walking out of a hot shower. The hot water evaporates and cools you down.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm learning so much from this post.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Touch the roof of a car in the sun. Shit's hot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Probably because the metal absorbed heat from sunlight and heated up considerably, but the water was room temp only.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Probably both. Definitely evaporation will remove the most heat if both substances are at the same temperature initially.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Simplified: Energy is stored as heat in matter (the jostling of atoms and molecules) and there are many more water molecules under the bridge than there are molecules/atoms in the bridge. So both the water and the metal heat up during the day and cool down at night, but since there is much more water, the water has a much more stable temperature. In short: Larger volumes of atoms have larger heat capacities.

If the water under the bridge was stagnant and a shallow puddle, then it's temperature would vary much more throughout the day as well, but it would still warm up less than metal or soil, since a body of water loses some of it's heat through evaporation.

This is also why coastal climate is a thing: the huge mass of water in the ocean makes it so that coastal areas are warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.